Tag: fine

Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE has agreed to plead guilty and pay up in a US sanctions case, drawing a line under a damaging scandal that had threatened its cut off its supply chain.

While the fine was larger than expected, ZTE, also a major smartphone maker, reported robust underlying earnings for 2016 and was upbeat in estimates for the first quarter.

A five-year investigation found ZTE conspired to evade US embargoes by buying US components, incorporating them into ZTE equipment and illegally shipping them to Iran.

It also made 283 shipments of telecommunications equipment to North Korea.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that ZTE Corporation not only violated export controls that keep sensitive American technology out of the hands of hostile regimes like Iran’s, they lied … about their illegal acts,”

But ZTE relies on US suppliers for 25 percent to 30 percent of its components, many of which are key to its goods. It buys about $2.6 billion worth of components a year from US firms. This includes Qualcomm, Microsoft and Intel.

ZTE Chief Executive Zhao Xianming said in a statement that his outfit acknowledges the mistakes it made, takes responsibility for them, and remains committed to positive change in the company.

The company agreed to a seven-year suspended denial of export privileges, which could be activated if there are further violations, as well as three years of probation, a compliance and ethics program, and a corporate monitor.

It also agreed to an additional penalty of $300 million that will be suspended during the seven-year term on the condition the company complies with requirements in the agreement.

ZTE has replaced executives allegedly involved, including naming a new president.

The company said it slid to a preliminary net loss of $342 million in 2016, its first loss in four years, due to the settlement.

Japan’s securities watchdog is likely to recommend a $60 million fine for scandal-hit Toshiba for its advanced books cookery over the past seven years

According to the Nikkei business daily, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission will make the recommendation to the Financial Services Agency as early as this month.

Toshiba has expected the fine and apparently been putting its pennies aside in a big jar by the door. The fine will not harm its profits, although given the fact it is short of cash it would probably like to spend the money on something else.

Tosh inflated profits over roughly seven years, in what third-party investigators blamed on over-reaching and a culture that discouraged employees from questioning authority. The fine will be eight times the largest that watchdogs have issued in Japan.

The record was 1.6 billion yen paid by industrial conglomerate IHI Corp in 2008 for accounting-related violations, the Nikkei said.

Toshiba has since appointed more outsiders to its board of directors, which this month said it had sued five former executives over mismanagement.

The US Department of Justice’s antitrust division has announced its first successful prosecution against an e-commerce outfit.

David Topkins was accused of conspiring with other poster sellers to manipulate prices on Amazon from September 2013 to Jan. 2014, according to papers filed in a San Francisco federal court.

The DoJ said Topkins had agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to illegally fix the prices of posters he sold online, pay a $20,000 criminal fine and cooperate with its probe. The deal requires court approval.

Topkins used algorithms, for which he wrote computer code, to coordinate price changes, and then share information about poster prices and sales.

The Justice Department said this activity violated the Sherman Act, a federal antitrust law, by causing posters to be sold at “collusive, non-competitive” prices.

Amazon was not charged in the case against Topkins. He might have got off lightly. The charge against Topkins carries a maximum 10-year prison term and $1 million fine, the Justice Department said.

Korea’s Fair Trade Commission collected a record number of fines against companies accused of price fixing, in the first 11 months of 2011.

Companies were made to pay back a total of $923 million (1 trillion won), exceeding the commissions’ expectations of $372.3 million (402.9 billion won). The sum was larger as a result of several large scale investigations.

Price fixing has increased in Korea as firms search for ways to make bigger profits. This year alone, Hitachi, HP and AUO have been fined for allegedly jumping into bed with their friends and manipulating LCD and other technology prices.

As a result of such cases, the FTC made $179 million ($194 billion won) in fines from LCD panel makers and other technologies.

Other cases that raked in the cash were three local instant noodle makers who were found to have cooked up plans for nine years to match product prices, while eight construction companies were fined after an investigation on collusion to win deals for the four rivers restoration project.

The Korean FTC’s record fine earnings comes months after it was criticised by parties who claimed it should not be given the exclusive right to decide if companies should face investigation for antitrust activities.

The watchdog was criticised after a series of lenient decisions made by the organisation, which saw its critics allege that it seemed more eager to protect businesses than victims of unfair treatment.

Yahoo has been given a slap on the wrist by the Adverting Standards Authority (ASA), which has condemned the company for encouraging speeding.

The watchdog took a chunk out of the company following complaints by just two people who who said that the ad for the new BT Yahoo Mail Beta “was likely to cause harm” as it “condoned and encouraged excess speed and irresponsible driving.”

They took offence at the line: “Faster is funner. Introducing the 2x faster New BT Yahoo! Mail. Find out more about BT Yahoo! Mail Beta”.

The advert pictured two females in a convertible sports car, while the passing scenery was blurred. They were not checking their emails.

Of course, Yahoo issued a speedy reply to defend itself, claiming that the ad was not related to motoring. It said that it also did not believe that the advert encouraged speeding or driving irresponsibly.

In order to prevent a penalty it continued to cover its [car] tracks, explaining that the blurred scenery was only used to depict the car was travelling along a mountain path and that “the car was not travelling over the speed limit”.

Yahoo’s “I didn’t know officer, honest” didn’t quite wash. The ASA ordered it to ensure the advert was banished from ever appearing again in its current form.

The ASA concluded that the headline and the image did portray speed “in a way that might encourage motorists to drive irresponsibly”. It could also be viewed as a green-light from Yahoo to act in an anti-social fashion and encourage irresponsible driving, but anyone who takes their cue from a Yahoo advert is probably a car-crash of a person anyway.

Just the ticket we say.

Meanwhile, plans for Talk Talk’s “Over the limit!” campaign have never existed.

France has stood up, again, to the all encompassing Google. It has fined the company a record $142,000 (€100,000) after finding it guilty of collecting private information while compiling its Street View service.

France is one of the few countries to follow through with making a stand, after the UK along with the Information Commissioner’s Office decided to clear the company of wrongdoing.

However, the National Commission for Information Freedom (CNIL) has slapped the company with a fine after it found that it had not kept its pledge to erase all private data.

It instead found that “Google had not refrained from using the data identifying Wi-Fi access points of individuals without their knowledge.”

This, it said, meant Google had to pay up because the methods had constituted “unfair collection” of information under French law. To top it off the CNIL also claimed Google had received economic benefits from the data.

“It is a record fine since we obtained the power in 2004 to impose financial sanctions,” the head of the CNIL regulator, Yann Padova said.

The fine has been welcomed by Big Brother Watch. Daniel Hamilton, Director at the privacy group, told TechEye that he was “delighted” that France had taken “such clear and unequivocal action against Google.”

However, he pointed out that “sadly,” the ICO over here “effectively abdicated responsibility for online privacy.”

This, Hamilton says, has been shown with the ICO “refusing to take what he calls “knee-jerk” action against Google for the illegal harvesting of personal data.”

Although Mr Hamilton said that this showed the ICO could not be taken seriously , it seems the watchdog’s hands could be tied.

Back in December we reported that the coalition was rather cosy with Google. Mr Cameron is being advised directly about the East London Tech city. We reported that Google has many friends here. Not to mention interesting inter-personal ties.

Mr Hamilton said there was a great deal the central government could learn from “innovative companies like Google, particularly in terms of increasing the general public’s access to information and fostering better communications between the public and private sectors.”

However, he points out that he hoped the Coalition will learn from Google’s best practices and “scrupulously” avoid “any form of engagement with privacy-infringing programmes such as Street View and the monitoring of personal email accounts”

Google launched its Street View service in 2007 and has since been living in a row over spying and privacy concerns. In addition to concerns about photos taken, Google admitted in 2010 that its cars, which were meant to be taking pictures, were also picking up Wi-Fi data and had “inadvertently” captured unencrypted private data including passwords and e-mails. It was blamed on a rogue engineer.

The European Commission has been fined just over €12 million ($16 million) for software copyright infringement.

The fine of €12,001,000 was given after the General Court of the European Union ruled that the Commission infringed the copyright of software it employed by French firm Systran.

The dispute was over the EC-Systran Unix software, which Systran adapted from its machine translation software for the EC between 1997 and 2002. In 2003 the EC put out a call for tenders to maintain and linguistically enhance the system, which Systran informed the EC would infringe its copyright.

The EC failed to recognise these rights, saying that Systran did not provide probative documents to properly establish its claim.

Nearly a decade later, with four years spent in heated court battles, the General Court found the EC guilty of copyright infringement, a decision which Systran has called “historic”. Systran also said that this is the first time a European institution “has been condemned in such a manner and to such a degree.”

The damages to be paid to Systran include €7 million in fees Systran would have claimed between 2004 and 2010 if the EC had properly employed Systran in tendering for alterations to the EC-Systran Unix system. It also includes €5 million in compensation for the potential effect of the EC’s behaviour on Systran’s finances over the last six years. A final €1,000 is given as non-material compensation.

The Court warned the EC to respect Systran’s copyright. If not, Systran will be entitled to launch a new infringement case to seek further damages.

As a final measure the General Court ordered the publication of a press release detailing the situation as a form of non-pecuniary compensation for the reputational damage that Systran suffered due to the EC’s “unlawful conduct”.